Southampton - St Mary's

Wycombe's away game at Southampton was a highlight to look out for when the fixtures came out, playing at grounds like St Mary's was the best thing about getting promoted. The fixture computer handed us a midweel trip in December, but still, on the night, nearly 700 Wycombe fans travelled, not bad when people had work both days.

I as usual had decided to go by car and visit grounds along the way. The roads down to Southampton was not a well trodden path for me, so after visiting quite a few grounds in:

A real football ground bonanza for me then, the most enjoyable being Moneyfields and Portsmouth, both within a mile of each other and both allowing me into the ground and being really friendly too. The least inspiring being Guildford City, which was a basic athletics stadium and VTFC (Now called Sholing) where all I saw was a gate. In between seeing the game and writing this, I have been to games at Havant, Godalming and Portsmouth, Havant being the pick of the 3.

It was still only 3pm when I had visited all these grounds, so we made our way to Southampton City Centre for a look around the shops. The city centre was decent enough, one of the better ones I have been to. With all the Christmas stuff about, I was in a pretty happy mood when we set off for St Mary's. We got there about 5.30 and went to a nearby Wetherspoons for dinner, which as per usual for them was a good pint, but mediocre food. After that it was a short walk to the ground, arriving just before 7.

It had been a good day up till then, but unfortuantly the Wycombe performance was not up to much. We were well outplayed, but 1-0 was not a bad result, all told, it was just a shame we never had a real go at them as we could have been so close to getting a result if a shot had gone in against the run of play.

ST MARY'S is a great ground, smart and modern with good legroom and a world apart from the run down but much loved St Mary's. Sadly I did not get to visit their old ground though, so I can't comment with any great authority. With a capacity of around 25000, it's just about the right size for the Saints and looks pretty impressive under floodlights.